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Guildford pub bombings latest

Ms Campbell told the hearing that all the Hamiltons had was a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings, and had not been involved in either the criminal trial in 1975 or the public inquiry into the wrongful convictions of the Guildford Four carried out in 1994.

She said: "It is put away by one generation only to be taken out by the next. It was put together by Ann's parents. They pored over it, seeking answers and finding none.

"We are now on the fourth generation who are still asking the same questions and finding no answers in the yellowing papers."

Home secretary Roy Jenkins (1920 - 2003) leaving the wrecked Horse and Groom public house in Guildford two days after an IRA bomb exploded, killing five people and injuring 65. (Image: Getty Images)

Victims 'not as significant in the public consciousness as Guildford Four'

Apart from Ann Hamilton, a private in the Women's Royal Army Corps (WRAC), the other victims were Private Caroline Slater, 19, also of the WRAC, Guardsmen John Hunter, 18, and William Forsyth, 17, of the Scots Guards, and a 21-year-old civilian, Paul Craig. Sixty-five others were injured.

The original inquests into the five deaths were never concluded after the conviction of the Guildford Four - Gerard Conlon, Paddy Armstrong, Paul Hill and Carole Richardson - in 1975.

They were eventually released in 1989 after an investigation of Surrey Police's handling of the inquiry found evidence showing they had been wrongfully convicted.

Gerry Conlon, one of the Guildford Four, on his release from prison in October 1989. The Four served 15 years behind bars after they were wrongfully convicted of planting bombs in two pubs in Guildford in 1974. (Image: Mirrorpix)

Nobody has been held responsible for the bombings since the release of the Guildford Four, despite members of the IRA's "Balcombe Street Gang" confessing to the bombings in 1977.

While the initial police investigation and subsequent miscarriage of justice have received significant attention, Ms Campbell said, there has been little focus on the events of October 5 1974.

She said Sir John May's report on the case mentioned the deceased only once and covered the bombing itself in just 10 paragraphs.

The Seven Stars pub, in Swan Lane, after the second explosion in the attack.

Reading from a letter written by relatives of Guardsman John Hunter, 17, she said: "The Guildford Five seem never to have been as significant in the public consciousness as the Guildford Four."

The application to reopen the inquests was supported by the family of Carole Richardson, who died in 2013 at the age of 55, and Paddy Armstrong, 68, who was present at Thursday's hearing.

Patrick Armstrong sitting down drinking a glass of beer following his release in 1989 (Image: Allen Roger)

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Inquests are prohibited by law from determining criminal liability, and are constrained to answer only the questions of who died and how, when and where they died.

Mr Johnson argued that these details were already matters of public record, but Ms Campbell said the full facts had not been determined.

She said: "There can be no more worthwhile purpose than to satisfy these families that the facts have been explored so they are no longer overshadowed by the miscarriage of justice."

Three of the accused Guildford pub bombers (Image: Mirrorpix)

Police lost five boxes of documents

Mr Johnson also informed the court that Surrey Police's efforts to catalogue and examine all its material relating to the bombings had logged almost 4,000 documents but was still only a quarter of the way through the available material after around a year of work.

He said it was expected to take between 12 and 18 months to finish cataloguing the documents and another 12 to 18 months to determine whether or not another investigation needed to be conducted.

He added that five boxes of documents had been lost after mistakenly being collected by a contractor and destroyed, but said copies of almost all the documents in those boxes, if not all of the documents, were believed to be contained in other files.

The coroner has reserved judgment and will announce his decision on whether or not to reopen the inquests on January 31.